Geminate Acquisition and Representation by Ammani Arabic-Speaking Children

Abstract

This study investigates the acquisition and representation of geminate plosives and geminate liquids in the speech of Ammani Arabic (AA) children aged from 2;6 (year; month) to 5 years, at six months intervals. Although gemination is perceived properly by AA children at an early stage, in which they produce words including geminates significantly longer than words with singletons, the acoustic measurements indicate that the children’s phonetic/acoustic representations start to be noticeable (in comparison with adults) at the age-stage of 3;7-4, and much closer to that of the adults by the age-stage 4;7-5. In terms of phonological representation, it is found that gemination is implemented as a main strategy by AA children for word-medial clusters at syllable boundaries. Interestingly, if the medial cluster is not pronounced faithfully, it will be pronounced as a geminate consonant where the second member of the cluster compensates for the deleted consonant to rescue the moraic weight and the segmental length that would be achieved by producing the target of two distinct consonantal gestures. This strategy offers an intriguing piece of evidence for the two-root node composite modal which combines moraic representation of geminates (by preserving weight to the syllable) and prosodic representation (by preserving segmental length to the geminate consonant).

Production of gutturals by non-native speakers of Arabic

“…differences in mouth sizes) raw formant frequencies of all vowels for all speakers were normalized using the speaker extrinsic Labov ANAE method available within the online vowel normalization suite, NORM version 1.1 (Thomas & Kendall, 2007). This method is able to account for anatomical and physiological variation between speakers while it preserves sociolinguistic differences (Mashaqba et al, 2021;Thomas & Kendall, 2007). To estimate the reliability of F1 and F2 measurements, 24 tokens were randomly selected and re-analyzed by the first author following the same procedure explained above.…”

Stress Misassignment in the Pronunciation of English by Arabic-speaking Learners: Erratic Practice or Crosslinguistic Influence?

“…The topic of language transfer (L1 influence) and its effects on second and foreign language acquisition has been discussed profusely in the realms of linguistics, applied linguistics and foreign-language acquisition (e.g., Ringbom 1992;Robinson 2008;Han 2004), and the body of research on this aspect of language acquisition continues to grow. The older the learner, it has been argued in much of the literature, the more pronounced is L1 influence on the learning of a foreign language Mashaqba et al (2021). indicate that when children speak, their acoustic representations are very different from those of adults at around the age of four, but very similar to adults a year later.…”

Assessing the Phonological Abilities of Jordanian Arabic-speaking Children with Phonological Disorders

“…For example, in the word sabbaḥ 'to help someone swim', two points are awarded for the geminate and two points for its correctness. If a child mispronounces the geminate but preserves its length (e.g., "bal.la" instead of "bar.ra" for 'outside'), one point is given for each occurrence of the geminate because geminates are contrastive units in Arabic and help in deducing the meaning of the word even when mispronounced (Abu Guba, 2021;Mashaqba et al, 2021). Moreover, if the geminate is produced as a singleton (e.g., [qadar] for qaddar 'to estimate', one point is awarded for the singleton and another point for the correctness of the consonant).…”

“…This age period is considered a decisive stage in language acquisition, where children typically experience significant progress in their phonological and articulatory skills. Previous research suggests that the age range of 5-6 years old is characterized by substantial variability in language development, making it an appropriate time to explore differences in phonological abilities (Mashaqba et al, 2021). More specifically, focusing on this age group enables us to capture a crucial stage before formal schooling begins, providing insights into early phonological challenges that may impact a child's readiness for literacy development This study is a follow-up to Huneety et al's (in press), who proved the efficiency of the four measures in reflecting the phonological development of children and recommended conducting another study to check the usage of these measures to distinguish TD children from children with language impairments.…”